Tag: Early Sex and Reproduction

Wellcome MS. 632 may be the only surviving ‘birth girdle’ in England that was actually used during childbirth. This parchment roll survives as a rare artefact from a time when women, who could afford it, gave birth in well-furnished darkened… Continue reading

The second seminar in the 2015–16 History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar Series takes place on Tuesday 27th October. Speaker: Dr Gabriella Zuccolin (University of Cambridge) Women’s medicine between script and print, c. 1450–1600 Abstract: By 1600 only a few gynaecological texts written in Latin… Continue reading

Known as ‘The scholar’, Louise Bourgeois Boursier (1563–1636) was a recognised midwife within the 17th century French court. The trials and tribulations of her life illustrate the marginal position of female midwives in medicine at the time. Despite this, Bourgeois… Continue reading

Paper proposals are invited for a conference on ‘Bodily fluids/fluid bodies in Greek and Roman Antiquity’ that will take place at St Michael’s College, Cardiff, 11–13 July 2016. The conference is organised by Dr Victoria Leonard (Cardiff) and Dr Laurence… Continue reading

In her inaugural post on the Early Medicine blog, Elma Brenner used an iconic image of the female practitioner ‘Trotula’ to introduce the new digitisation of Wellcome MS. 544, a 14th-century collection of Latin medical texts. Many students of the… Continue reading

This is one of the first images of the unborn child printed in Europe. Produced in the early 16th century in a book on midwifery, it offered readers a fascinating peek at the child hidden in the belly, and instituted… Continue reading

Welcome to Early Medicine, the Wellcome Library’s blog channel on medicine and health in Europe in the ancient, medieval and early modern periods. Our new blog was born from a wish to exploit our growing body of early digitised content… Continue reading